A Question about Fannish Terminology

[attackfish]

sholio wrote an essay just recently about why Steve/Bucky AUs don't work for her (the AU part, not the Steve/Bucky part) and quite apart from the contents of the essay, it got me wondering about what we call AUs in fandom currently.  Back when I got started, *crotchety old fan voice* things like high school AUs and coffee shop AUs were called "ARs", or Alternate Reality fics whereas  "AU" referred more broadly to both ARs and also "what if" stories.  However, sholio only talked about AR-style AUs, and a number of her points don't really work for what if AUs.  A while back, I ran an Avatar: the Last Airbender AU meme, and after getting almost exclusively AR prompts (and most of those for fusions) I had to explain that what if prompts were definitely also accepted.  I periodically see meta about how the writer of said meta doesn't think AUs are enough like canon, then goes on to describe only AR-style AUs.

Did the meaning of AU narrow  and I didn't realize it? I would kind of like to know, most of what I write other than drabbles are what-ifs.  What if Lupin bit Snape when they were in school, what if Azula captured Zuko at the beginning of  "The Southern Raiders," what if Iroh died when he drank white jade tea. The story I'm working on right now is a what if: what if those Earth Kingdom soldiers in Book One had managed to capture Iroh and Zuko and take them to Ba Sing Se.  If these aren't AUs, I kind of would like to know what to call them.

Comments

[sholio]

Yeah, I realize, reading this, that I should've specified I meant total AUs and not any AUs. The terminology I'm familiar with is total AU (i.e. coffee shop AU, space AU) vs ... well, I've heard a lot of different terms for the other kind, the kind you write: canon-divergent AUs or canon-based AU or what-if AU or alternate timeline are all things that I've heard people call them.

In any case, it seems like AU is still generally used as an umbrella term for all forms of non-canon-compliant fic, whether a branching timeline or a completely different universe -- well, to the extent that I'm clued into popular fannish terminology myself, which is ... not very. XD I guess for myself, when I say "AU" without specifying a type, it's total AUs I'm talking about (as my meta shows, I guess!) but it certainly doesn't confuse me when people say "AU" and mean a fic of the turn-left-at-canon type.

In any case, I'm sorry for being confusing with my own imprecise use of terms!

[attackfish]

I remember when at least parts of the Harry Potter fandom called them AT for Alternate Timeline, leading to the category on some sites "ARs, ATs, and other AUs".

By the way, I am right there with you about White Collar prompting more total AUs out there. With A:tLA, it was all "What if Zuko didn't have Iroh? What if Toph discovered Aang?" but with White Collar, I'm like "What if Neal were a dragon?" I don't know whether this is because White Collar lends itself to this, or whether I just always feel the need for magic when I fic.

On the other hand, I've written a fair number of commentfic total AUs and fusions for A:tLA, including the Hufflepuff Zuko verse, which got kind of big. Left to my own devices, I write alternate timeline fics, but then people prompt me.